Submarine Warfare, Past, Present, and Future

“The submarine craft is a miracle of ingenuity though Nelson and his hearts of oak, fighting only on deck, in God’s free air, and with ‘the meteor flag of England’ fluttering overhead, would have loathed and scorned her burglarious, area-sneak dodges down below.” In modern under-water warfare two weapons are employed, the Mine and the Torpedo. Both are explosive devices, but whilst mines are stationary, torpedoes are endowed with the power of locomotion in some form or another. The modern submarine boat is in reality a diving torpedo-boat and like all other torpedo craft of the present day its function is to discharge automobile torpedoes. The submarine boat is sometimes said to be the child of the torpedo-boat. As a matter of fact the earliest known torpedo vessel was designed to do its work under water. In 1776 an attack was made on the English frigate H.M.S. Eagle, and in 1777 on the English man-of-war H.M.S. Cerberus by a submarine vessel invented by David Bushnell and provided with “torpedoes.” Although no injury was inflicted on these ships, three of the crew of a prize schooner astern of the Cerberus, in hauling one of Bushnell’s drifting torpedoes on board, were killed by its explosion.

Pages: 244, Paperback, Anson Street Press